Italy! Part Three

First of all, thank you mom and dad for fixing my debit card! Now I can actually go grocery shopping and not feel like I'm on the brink of starvation.


So for the second week in Italy, Emily went back to Paris and I spent the week in hostels with Serena. We first checked into the hostel Saturday morning. I keep telling dad how surprised I am that our hostel was so nice, but it really was. It's called the BellaRoma hostel, it's near the Vatican and wasn't very hard to find since I had directions. Serena and I staked out a corner; she took the bottom bunk and I took the top. After 2 days though, she took the top bed next to mine so we could talk easier. We kept spreading out, taking up more and more room. There weren't many people staying there, which was nice because Serena and I often had the room to ourselves, and we were always able to use the computer whenever we wanted. The hostel had a kitchen so we made pasta a couple times. We nicnamed ourselves "the hostile witches" and then later "the hostel cats." It was funny because the second hostel didn't have a kitchen, so we had to keep our food in odd places...

Me: Where's the butter?
Serena: In my pocket.
Me: And the salad?
Serena: Under the bed.

I think I was better at Italian than I am at French. You pronounce things the way they are spelled and if you just wave your arms around a lot, like they do, your Italian sounds even more legitimate. Although now that I'm back in Paris, for some reason my French feels more natural to me. It only took 2 months of living here to feel somewhat comfortable! I wish I had a bigger vocabulary, because i generally use the same phrases over and over again, which is why they now feel so natural. In Italy, we kept saying "ciao bella" and "andiamo" (lets go) and we never got tired of saying it!

So anyway, I don't remember the exact order we did everything the second week, because it wasn't structured like the tour, but I'll try. On Saturday we were both tired so we wandered around our area, went shopping, and bought groceries. There were a lot of outdoor markets and stands because it was Saturday. I perused the aviator sunglasses, but I didn't buy any until later that week (5 euros). Ooh, but Serena and I found some amazing necklaces for only 1 euro each that were strands of semiprecious stones! I saw a bunch of women crowding around one of the outdoor stands so I went to check it out. I bought 2 amethyst, 2 emerald, and 2 multicolored. I've been wearing some of them, but I think Kimbo and Marissa and Mom will be getting some when I come home. I think that was the best purchase I made in Rome, especially since the stones are real and I saw the SAME things in the airport for over 50 euros apiece.

On Sunday we got an early start because the weather was good. We bought pastries and ate them on the steps at the vatican. We kept joking to each other how everyone was staring at our pastries and getting jealous of them because they looked so good. Sure enough, a few people asked us where we had gotten the pastries.

When we were walking around, we saw a bunch of people running-- no, sprinting--- after some cars that had a bunch of security around them. Alas, the pope! A crowd of thousands of people gathered outside the vatican in the big square. At noon, the pope appeared in one of the windows marked by a red flag way up high in one of the buildings. He spoke in a bunch of different languages, including English. So that was kind of cool, seeing the pope.

We walked around some more and stumbled across a museum where we got in for free thanks to our art student passes. The man there thought we were French because Serena spoke to him in French. This happened a couple times when I was with Serena. "J'habite a Paris. Je suis une etudiante, j'etudiee le commerce." (I live in Paris. I am a student, I study business.)

We ate canella gelato (cinnamon!) which we both loved. It was my favorite of our entire time in Italy, but we never found the flavor again. We saw these 3 fountains which are famous for something and did a little photoshoot by them. But the funny part was, all day, Serena and I had attracted attention (as usual) but especially today because of our outfits. She has her wild curly hair and a bright green coat and I had my blonde hair and I was wearing bright blue knee stockings. And we were both wearing white sunglasses. So as we were doing our photoshoot, some italian man with an expensive looking camera started taking pictures of us, really obviously. I wonder if they'll end up in some Italian fashion magazine sometime...

We decided to wander back to our hostel and I was like, "I think it's this way because I can see the dome of the Vatican! I can't believe we're so close!" After a few minutes, I saw another dome. Oh, wait. There's domes ALL OVER Rome, and we had been walking in the wrong direction. It was okay, though, because we stumbled across the Pantheon. It was kind of unimpressive from the outside, but very nice on the inside.

On Monday, we did more walking, more shopping and went to the Trevi Fountain. On Tuesday, we went to St. Peter's Basilica, which is the Cathedral. We went inside, saw the Pieta statue, went underground and saw the tombs of the popes. In front of the tomb of Pope John Paul II there were a bunch of old ladies gazing at his grave and crying. Serena and I thought this was really funny and were giggling like crazy until a guard told us to be quiet. We also paid 5 euros to climb up to the top of the building, which took forever. There are a million stairs and it's very narrow and twisty and claustrophobic and it takes you up, up, up. At the top, you can see a view of the city, so we took a bunch of pictures.

On Tuesday evening, we went to the Colosseum and saw a different side from the touristy light of day. This is where a lot of young Italian kids go to drink, smoke pot, make out, etc... Of course there's also people like us, taking advantage of the emptiness. We met some Italian students there, a boy and a girl who were about our age. We talked to them for a while; I practiced my Italian and they practiced their English, and we made plans to meet up again on Thursday night.

On Wednesday, we went to the Trevi Fountain and Spanish steps late at night. I forget what we did during the day, it all kind of blends together. Oh, I know, we switched hostels. And went to some creepy dungeon place. Our next hostel was a lot more cramped and crowded, so it was harder to use the Internet and we didnt have as much privacy. the location was better though; it was a short walk from the Colosseum. We met some interesting people including a German boy who was in Rome to run a marathon. I saw a box of kinder chocolates on his bed and told him "My favorite thing about Germany is the Kinder." He looked at me strangely and I realized I'd said my favorite thing about germany is the children! I explained that I love the chocolate and I've never seen Kinder in the US, so he gave me the box of chocolate.

As we were walking around by our hostel, we passed some pretty church and some guy who works there invited us inside to look at "the oldest mosaic in Rome." Then he showed us these really old underground ruins of ancient Roman streets. It was cool, but too cold down there!

On Thursday we went into the Colossuem, which was cool. Oh, the only non-cool thing was that we didn't get a discount! It was 11 euros! And my camera ran out of batteries immediately after we got inside, so I had to ask the man at the exit if I could run out, buy batteries, and go back in. It was really hot that day, and later we met my friend Alex at the Trevi Fountain. I have 2 friends from UCR studying in Rome and we'd seen them a few times in Rome.

Serena and I decided to put our falling-into-the-fountain plan into motion! It was so hot outside, we knew we'd dry off quickly, and we both really wanted to do it. Alex kept warning us not to, that the polizia would come and give us a fine or even arrest us, but I suspected he was just being paranoid. I mean, I figured if we made it look like an accident, no one will give us a hard time. So Alex took the camera and started videotaping us and Serena and I sat on the edge. For a while we just talked and climbed around. Then we started splashing each other, and then I fell in, and she fell in after me. I screamed, which made everyone turn to look what was going on. We got out pretty quickly, but everyone started videotaping us and taking pictures. Some people were laughing, but we were laughing too. When we watched it later on camera, it looked SO fake! It looked really obvious we were hurling ourselves into the water, but oh well.

Anyway, that night we met up with our Italian friends at the Colosseum. They drove us to Campo di Fiori, which is a crowded place with lots of bars where all the young people go. We went to 2 bars and I got my pina coladas again! Serena and I decided we were too tired to go out dancing so they eventually dropped us off back at our hostel. We made plans to go out to lunch with the Italian people tomorrow, but we ended up ditching them because it was our last full day in Rome and we hadn't seen the Sistine Chapel yet.

So on Friday we went to the Vatican Museum, and ran into more people from AUP. This happened earlier too; it seems everyone from our school went to Rome for Spring Break. We walked through the museum, and sat in the Sistine Chapel for a while. Then we left, did more shopping, ate pizza, went to our favorite gelato place one more time, and went back to the hostel.

We didn't sleep much that night because we went outside to go to the Colosseum one last time and found a cat. We followed the cat into some casino and sat on some couches and pet it. The guy who worked there didn't mind and even offered us coffee. Too bad neither of us like coffee.

Anyway, we flew home the next morning at 9:30 am, got home exhausted and dirty, and that was that.